PI Site Instructions

Tip. For ease of viewing content during editing, log in to your website in one browser but view the site in another browser. Be sure to refresh the viewing browser (F5) after making edits.

Home Page. To update the Home page, click on Widgets in the WP Dashboard menu.

The main “content” of the Home page is grouped in three Widget columns–HomePage Left, HomePage Middle, and HomePage Right. You can rearrange the order of the widgets both within and between the columns, and modify the content in each widget.

Because some of the Home page content has more formatting than easily accomplished with the standard WP text widget, those content sections were created in “Widget Blocks”, a plugin that provides a wysiwyg editor. To edit that content, you must open the appropriate Widget Block. For information on working with the WP editor, please see instructions below for Pages and Uploading Images to a Page or Post.

The Workshops List is maintained on the Workshops page. The Home page widget simply copies the Workshop List editing area from the Workshops page.

Header. The website header is comprised of the background image, the logo, and the Join button.

To replace the header background, create a 200 pixel in height “slice” of a 1600 pixel or wider image in a graphics program, save as “header-background.jpg”, and upload the image to /wp-content/themes/PI-theme/images.

The logo and Join button are managed via widgets (HeaderLeft and HeaderRight). You can upload a new logo (max height of 200px).

As with the content widgets on the Home page, you can rearrange the order of the footer widgets both within and between the columns, and modify the content in each footer widget.

Pages. On all “pages” of the site (other than Home page), individual content is managed directly on that page.

Click on Pages in the WP Dashboard and then click on the page you wish to edit. If the editing textbox only shows one row of formatting icons, click the second to last icon (Toggle Toolbar).

The editing area allows formatting of text (such as bold, italic, bulleted lists, indents), hyperlinks (the symbol that looks like a chain), and image and PDF file uploads.

Use Shift-Enter to enter a single line break, and Enter to add a double-spaced break.

Do not copy and paste images from MS Word into your WordPress content areas. Images must be uploaded and inserted using the Add Media button above the editing textbox.

Pages can be Published, Drafts, or Trashed. A trashed page can be restored until deleted permanently.

Be sure to click the blue Update button in the upper right to save your edits.

Pages on the website have a common sidebar that is managed via widgets.

Blog. The Blog has a separate sidebar, managed via widgets.

To create a new Post, click Posts in the WP Dashboard menu, then click Add New.

Posts should be assigned to one or more Categories and can also be assigned Tags.

Menus. To edit your site’s menus, click on Menus in the left-side Dashboard menu. There are two menus: main (the horizontal drop down menu that appears at the top of each page) and footer (the list of pages that are in the footer).

Settings. To view or change standard WP settings, click on Settings in the left-side Dashboard menu. Settings for installed plugins are listed separately in the Dashboard menu. If you cannot find a particular option you know exists in WP, first try clicking the Screen Options button in the upper right (below the header bar) and check if the option you seek is there and checked off. If not, click the Menu Editor link in the WP Dashboard menu and check if the option you seek has been “hidden”.

Uploading Images to a Page or Post

Position the cursor in the content editing area where you want to insert the image.

Click the Add Media button (above content editing area).

Click the Upload Files tab (upper left of the pop-up window).

Click the Select Files button in the center of the window.

Select the image file from your computer and click Open (at the bottom of the dialogue box).

In the Attachment Details section (on the right), enter a Title for the image. Typically, this would include a description of the image and the photographer name or other copyright. Copy this text to the Alt Text box. The Title and Alt Text are used by different browsers to describe the image to screen readers and are not visible on the page. If you want a description of the image to be visible on the page, enter the description in the Caption box.

In the Attachment Display Settings, select an Alignment. If you select Left or Right, the text on the page will “wrap” around the image. If you select Center, the image will be centered with no text on either side.

In most cases, you can leave the Link To option to Media File (which will show the full-size of the image when the user clicks on the image). If you want the image to link to another web page, select the Custom URL option and enter the URL of the web page.

Select a Size for the image.

Click the blue Insert into page button (far right bottom, in the Attachment Details section).

Be sure to click the blue Update button on the Page to save your edited page.

To delete a photo on a page: double-click the photo and two symbols will appear in the top left of the photo. Click the red circle to delete the image.

Click the blue Insert into page button (far right bottom, in the Attachment Details section).

Be sure to click the blue Update button on the Page to save your edited page.

Back Up Your Site!!!

Your site has a plugin, UpDraft Plus that is set to back up your entire WP site once a month. You can also schedule backups on a different schedule or manually on-demand. This last option is good for backing up your site prior to running any updates.

You should also do an export of your site regularly. From the WP Dashboard, click Tools, then Export and save the resulting XML file to your computer.